On Thursday night, the University of Northern Colorado rec center intramural pickleball tournament was cut short when only two students showed up to play.
The event’s coordinator, UNC club sports intern Forrest Meyer was surprised by the low attendance at his pickleball event.
“We want to spread out throughout campus and get as many people as we can to participate. So, we wanted to branch out and do pickleball, everyone loves pickleball, I thought,” Meyer said. “We had like five people sign up and then only two showed up.”
Meyers is not the only person to notice the decreased attendance at rec center events. UNC senior Emme Dunn been working for the campus rec for three years and has also noticed recent trends in student engagement.
“It’s just kind of declined,” Dunn said. “I feel like participation in general, that we’ve seen across campus whether that’s people showing up to football games or all of that. I feel like clubs especially Greek life hasn’t organized their own groups to come down and participate. So that’s interesting.”
A solution to alleviate a decline in student participation seems out of reach. Both Dunn and Meyers think that incentives like prizes or free entry into the events could boost engagement, but Dunn thinks the issue is deeper rooted than it appears.
“I feel like it’s just hard because we’re such a small community,” Dunn said. “It’s such a small campus that people are just not as motivated as a bigger campus to do stuff––because we’ve even seen the numbers in the rec going down and that’s why we have had budget cuts here and our hours are fluctuating.”
Although a decrease in enrollment and university budget cuts is impacting the operating hours of the UNC rec center, the rec center resources available to students are consistent so students can plan and host their own events.
“You can rent rooms, so if there was a sorority event going on they could rent upper group fit or lower group fit,” Dunn said. “Sometimes athletes will come in, and their coaches will rent out the whole gym or the aux gym to hold practices and stuff.”
Every Friday UNC jazz studies student Darian Dent and his friends play basketball at the rec center. Last month, Dent tried to plan a 3 v. 3 basketball tournament with the rec center and experienced some setbacks.
“It was difficult honestly,” Dent said. “The campus rec was fine. Some communication stuff took longer than I would have liked—but we ended up having to cancel the event because of low engagement from students.”
Dent does not attribute the lack of student engagement to one sole cause, but he thinks that disinterest in events, lack of incentives and poor communication all contribute to student disengagement. Although he recognizes this issue, he does not condemn his peers for their decisions to forgo campus events.
“I’ve also seen it where people just don’t want to go to things and that is not an issue,” Dent says. “I think that part of college is independence and doing what you want to do.”
Although limited student engagement may continue for some time, Meyer and his team are not giving up on student events. On May 2, he is hosting a pickup basketball event which will be one of the last events he hosts before his graduation in May. Although the event is the weekend before finals week, Meyers is excited to put it on and wants students to attend.
“It’s hard to get out of your room during these times, because it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, finals and I might have to move, or I have to go back home, and I have to pack up all my stuff.’” Meyer said. “It is a lot but just getting out and not dwelling on everything and getting your mind of it sure helps.”
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